Applicant has made many innovations in the area of fasteners, particularly for fastening wear plates to a structure. An example of one such fastener is described in International publication no. WO 2006/108245. The fastener described in the aforementioned publication is a nutless bolt which is inserted into a hole from one side of a surface and is applied or fixed in place by attaching an application tool to a head of the bolt and driving a pin into a bore formed centrally through the head and a shank of the bolt. The shaft is provided with a number of radially extending channels each of which provides a race for a corresponding ball. When the pin is driven in a down hole direction into the shaft it forces the balls to move radially along their respective channels so as to protrude partially from the channels beyond an outer circumferential surface of the shaft. This prevents the fastener from being removed in a direction opposite to the direction of insertion and in effect locks the fastener in place. To remove the fastener, the pin is pushed further in the down hole direction and falls from the shaft. This enables the balls to roll in a radially inward direction so as to lie within the outer circumferential surface of the shaft. Thus the fastener can now be removed from the hole. The ability to remove the fastener from the hole characterises the fastener as a bolt. This is to be contrasted from rivets which can only be removed by destroying the rivet itself.